The incoming administration of president-elect Tsai Ing-wen (蔡英文) should replace the Republic of China (ROC) national anthem lyrics with something that represents all Taiwanese and cut redundant government agencies, history professor Lee Hsiao-feng (李筱峰) said.
The National Taipei University of Education’s Graduate School of Taiwanese Culture professor made the call in an op-ed article published by the Chinese-language Apple Daily on Saturday.
Lee panned the lyrics of the ROC anthem, saying it was an adoption of the Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) anthem, and “an imposition hoisted on the people by the will of the party without democratic process.”
He added that the national anthem lyrics were a “placeholder” that was adopted by the KMT in 1930, which decided to use its own party anthem instead of formally penning one for the nation.
The KMT anthem was written in 1924 by ROC founding father Sun Yat-sen (孫逸仙) as an admonition to Whampoa Military Academy cadets — the party’s exclusive military arm — whose text the KMT adopted in 1929 to be the party anthem, he said.
The result of the KMT’s “usurpation” of the national anthem was the incorporation of party ideology in passages such as “The Three Principles of the People / Is our party’s belief,” and the recitation of the creed of KMT military cadets for all singers, such as the “nonsensical” injunction: “Be the vanguard of the people,” Lee wrote.
“If everyone is the people’s vanguard, who will take up the rear?” he wrote.
Tsai’s incoming administration should draft new lyrics that all citizens, regardless of political affiliation, can sing, Lee said.
“The pan-blue camp’s favorite mantra is to [demand] ‘love for the ROC.’ If they oppose drafting formal ROC national anthem lyrics, we know what to think of them,” he added.
Lee also urged Tsai to eliminate government offices and sinecures that have become redundant or anachronistic, including the Taiwan Provincial Government, Mongolian and Tibetan Affairs Commission and the Overseas Community Affairs Council, as well as the presence of military instructors on campus, calling it a “Martial Law-era residue” that is “a disgrace to democracy and an insult to soldiers” that must be abolished.
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